The various suffrage societies merged into Good Government Clubs with the avowed purpose of obtaining political action on many needed measures. The next year they secured mother's pension and equal guardianship laws, and others equally important in following years. The Executive Committee continued in existence and directed the work. At its meeting in 1916 it was decided to conduct an intensive campaign for prohibition in 1917; to elect a woman to Congress and a woman State Superintendent of Schools. Prohibition was carried; Miss Jeannette Rankin was elected the first Congresswoman in the United States and Miss May Trumper was elected Superintendent of Schools. That year an eight-hour-day for women was secured. This record was continued. Mrs. Maggie Smith Hathaway and Mrs. Emma A. Ingalls have served two terms each as State Representatives. All the county superintendents of schools are women.
After the Federal Amendment was submitted by Congress the societies met on June 22, 1919, and formed a State branch of the National League of Women Voters with Mrs. Edwin L. Norris chairman.
Ratification. Governor Samuel V. Stewart called a special session of the Legislature to meet in August, 1920, and the Federal Suffrage Amendment was ratified on the 2nd by unanimous vote in the House and by 38 to one in the Senate—Claude F. Morris of Havre, Hill county. The resolution was introduced in the House by Mrs. Ingalls.
FOOTNOTES:
[105] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Lucile Dyas Topping, formerly Lewis and Clark county superintendent of schools and prominent in the work of the campaign of 1914, when Montana women obtained the suffrage.
[106] In the intensive work that followed, Mrs. Tower was assisted by Dr. Dean, Mrs. Ellen Maria Dean, Mrs. James U. Sanders, Mrs. T. J. Walsh, Mrs. Bessie Hughes Smith, Mrs. Martha Dunkel, Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, Mrs. Adelaide Staves Reeder, Dr. Bertha Mackal McCleman, Mrs. C. B. Nolan, Mrs. Donald Bradford, Madame F. Rowena Medini, Miss Sarepta Sanders, Dr. Mary B. Atwater, Mrs. H. L. Sherlock, Mrs. Hughes and Miss Mary C. Wheeler.